cedmonds@wiltonvillager.com

WILTON — While their schoolmates were busy with last minute preparations before the Division 1 girls' lacrosse title game on June 9, Celia Kohl and Lexi Effron were on the water on Lake Harsha in Batavia, Ohio, beating rival club Long Beach Junior Crew on day two of the USRowing Youth National Championships.

Kohl and Effron faced the same boat in the June 10 finals, but couldn't regain the previous day's form and slipped to second place behind the Californian outfit in the women's eight race.

But for a boat that had placed 10th at nationals in 2006, silver medals were hardly cause for despondency.

"As my coach says, it's hard to be disappointed with second at nationals," said Kohl. "Of the 20 boats out there, all but one would love to have been where we were."

And there were other Warriors in their own right with Kohl and Effron, a rising senior at the high school. Four Wilton rowers represented Maritime Rowing Club [MRC] at nationals. Sebastian Kirwin, who graduated Wilton High School earlier this month, and Jeannie Friedman, who like Effron is a rising senior, also competed. Kirwin won gold in men's quadruple sculls, while Friedman's women's four boat took sixth.

Kirwin's boat avenged their defeat in 2006 to Malverne Prep, which won its fourth straight national title a year ago by edging MRC's men's quad by the slimmest of margins.

"Last year we got the silver and lost to Malverne Prep by one hundredth of a second," said Kirwin, who will row in college at Columbia. "We were pretty ticked off about this year and beat them about by a lot of hundredths of a second."

Unlike her three fellow Wiltonians, Friedman made her first trip to nationals this year. The coxswain for her boat, Friedman's job is to know just about everything about her rowers and dictate in-race tactics.

"I need to know the rowers' strengths and weaknesses and their technical struggles so that I can try to make calls for them to fix those struggles, and I need to know when to start the sprint," she said.

Although a nationals rookie, Friedman said her experience was a memorable one.

"It was definitely great," she said. "The level of rowing is so much greater than any other level. Everyone's more experienced. Everyone wants to win more. Everyone out there believes they can medal."

All four have accumulated considerable experience after coming to the sport early in the high school careers. Kohl followed the lead of her older brother and signed up with MRC before the start of eighth grade. Kirwin switched to rowing as his primary sport between his sophomore and junior years after playing lacrosse. Friedman picked up the sport at summer camp. Effron used rowing to stay fit for other sporting endeavors.

"I was a soccer player for while in the fall and spring, and started rowing during the winter to stay in shape," said Effron. "The coach for winter said I should try a learn to row program. I tried it, I loved it and it went from there. That was freshman year."

Given the time demands of rowing — MRC travels nationally and internationally for competitions — the trend, said Kirwin, isn't to progress from rowing to another sport, but to come from somewhere else to rowing.

"Rowing isn't a sport where you go from rowing to another sport. It's a sport you come to after doing something else," said Kirwin. "It takes up so much of your time, and once you're in it, you get stuck in it. You have to do it year-round or at least three seasons to actually do well."

From California to Pennsylvania to Massachusetts to Ohio, the Wilton quartet have traveled far and wide for their sport. The restraints that come with the travel are usually outweighed by the trips — and races — themselves.

"It's draining sometimes if on plane rides home you know you have a test the next day. But most of the time it's worth it," said Friedman.

"Traveling is a big commitment, but it's so much fun," said Kohl. "Getting to go these places, some of them are like going on vacation. Until you get in the water, and then it's go time."

Go time continues for Kirwin and Kohl — Kohl was invited to the USRowing Junior National team selection camp [see related story], and Kirwin's boat will race at Henley Royal Regatta in England and the Canamex Regatta in Canada in July — But it will have to wait until August's MRC "tune-up camp" for Friedman and Effron.

"For so long it's all that you're thinking about, all that you're focusing on and then it ends pretty abruptly," said Effron. "Saying our goodbyes in the airport was difficult, but we're already looking forward to the fall."